Credit: Ely Walker painting c/o Morean Arts Center
The Morean Arts Center has a lot of gallery space, and “Four Decades: PCCA Faculty and Alumni Exhibition” will occupy every square inch of it from Jan. 13-Mar. 28.

For those unfamiliar with the PCCA acronym, it stands for Pinellas County Center for the Arts—that’s Gibbs High School’s Arts magnet program.

The Pinellas County School District opened PCCA in 1984 to help high school students prepare for a career in the arts. Forty years later, the big question is, “Did it help students transition into a career in arts?”

The answer is yes and more. Not only did countless PCCA students graduate to successful careers in the arts, but many did so here in Tampa Bay.

Leon “Tes One” Bedore established Tampa Bay’s Street art scene, paintedg his first paid mural while still a PCCA student in the 1990s, then organizedSt. Pete’s first SHINE Mural Festival in collaboration with the St. Petersburg Art Alliance in 2015.

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PCCA alumna Christine Renc-Carter became Executive Director of the Leepa-Rattner Museum of Art in 2022.

PCCA alumna Carrie Jadus founded Soft Water Gallery with her husband and fellow artist Mark Aeling in St. Pete’s Warehouse Arts District in 2022.

Muralist Derek Donnelly purchased his studio and gallery space in Pinellas Arts Village in 2023. He closed 2023 painting his largest mural yet, 105 feet high, on the side of the Hilton Hiatus on Clearwater Beach.

Reid Jenkins is one of Tampa Bay’s most well-known tattoo artists; Laura Spencer, aka Miss Crit, operates design and fabrication firm Artonomy, LLC with her partner George Retkes in St. Pete; and Jennifer Kosharek painted murals all over Tampa Bay before moving to Alaska in 2022.

And that’s just seven of nearly 70 PCCA alums whose work is displayed at the Morean Arts Center this spring. In addition to PCCA alumni works, “Four Decades: PCCA Faculty and Alumni Exhibition” features work created by 17 current and former PCCA faculty members whose instruction contributed to the success of many PCCA alumni.

There’s no cover to get into “Four Decades: PCCA Faculty and Alumni Exhibition” which opens with a reception Jan. 13, 5-8 p.m., during Second Saturday ArtWalk.

“Some of the alumni are treating this as a reunion of sorts — so it will be very busy and wonderful that night,” Morean Curator Amanda Cooper told CL. Subscribe to Creative Loafing newsletters.

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This article appears in Jan 4-10, 2024.

Jen began her storytelling journey in 2017, writing and taking photographs for Creative Loafing Tampa. Since then, she’s told the story of art in Tampa Bay through more than 200 art reviews, artist profiles,...